The alarm went off at stupid o’clock, about 6.30am, I think. Outside it is bucketing down and I am stalling. Just one more snooze. Just another quick snooze. As we lay there listening to the rain, we came up with another idea.
Today was not a good day to go to the Colosseum. The Colosseum is mostly outdoors with lots of outdoorsy queues. This would be pretty uncomfortable in the rain, even if it isn’t cold. Besides, blue skies is much better for it! But what to do about the Pope in the Vatican?
Well, we made a few assumptions, and thankfully these turned out to be correct. He was holding an audience at about 10am where he would be standing on the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica and the entire front section would be free entry - but ticketed, and long sold out. So we thought - maybe there will be less people trying to get into the Vatican then, because the real keen ones will be going to his audience. And it can’t possibly go all day - there’s no closures mentioned on the website, so maybe they open the Basilica up after it’s all done? Turns out these were pretty good assumptions.
This mean we could sleep in a little more, and we got ready pretty damn slowly. Especially me - I slept poorly and was just struggling to get moving. Get moving I eventually did, and at about 8.20am we made our way to the station. By the way, if you want to get the metro in Rome, try to avoid peak times at all costs. We learnt this the hard way.
Powered along by the flood of people, we arrived at the platform about 4 deep. The first train went past - a few people got off, a whole lot more shoved on. There was no way Dan and I were getting on this train. 3 “ish” minutes later, another train rocked up and we surged ourselves forward. This journey was akin to London at peak time on something like the Piccadilly. It was disgusting. I was wearing my rain coat (although by the time we had left it had stopped raining) and that thing doesn’t breathe at all, so I was at risk of passing out. I didn’t need to hold onto anything - I couldn’t reach anything even if I tried, because we were all so pressed in there that I was quite happily being held up under the pressure of everyone else.
Slowly slowly, stop by stop, people got off and it eased up. When the Vatican stop popped up, we got off, and breathed in the outside air. Relief! We started the walk towards the Vatican City walls and the entrance to the museum.
So the next bit - I don’t know if we got salesperson and lied to, or if it was truth, but it all got pretty confusing and I was very confused. Basically, I’d been here before and I did one of those tours where someone grabs you outside and then you go in as a group. I wasn’t aware (and I’m still not 100% sure this is true), that if you got the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel ticket, you do not have entrance to the Basilica. However if you’re part of an organised tour, you get the Museum, the Chapel and then you go around the corner and pop into the Basilica. Perhaps it was true, and we weren’t just salespersoned.
A man stopped us and started to explain all this. I panicked a bit as I thought we could just get the cheap ticket inside and that would give us access to all three. When he whipped out the price list, the adult price for the 3 was €57, I just said to him, “I did this tour last year [slight embellishment] and they only charged me €40 [another slight embellishment]. Can you match this?”
He looked at me, slightly pained, and said “The best I can do is the child’s price here, at €42.”
Dan and I had a quick confer, and decided to go with it. In hindsight, I think the tours you can buy on the Vatican “website” (these sites have the worst online presences!!!!) is cheaper, around €35 but I’m struggling to even find that priceless to confirm.
So we got in for cheaper than I did the first time, and when we got to the ticket desk just across the road, he told me not to tell anyone what price we got it for as the rest were full price. In the end, I was quite glad we did a tour - the Sasha tour of the Vatican would have been really, really shit!
At 9.45am we met our guide, an energetic lady who is an art historian, and she was extremely passionate. She started off by telling us a bit about the museum and the chapel, and how the day was going to progress. She explained how the Vatican became a country of its own in 1929, relatively recently! It’s the smallest country in the world, at only about 3.2km around. She also explained that as it is a Wednesday, the Pope is having an audience (my heart sank a bit, I was hoping the online information had been wrong), and that the Basilica would be reopened again at about 12, 12.30. Excellent! This was actually what we had expected! By the time we finish the tour, we should be able to walk straight into the Basilica, or if not, wander through the museum again.
We started the trek across the road following her flag. I was at the front, and we talked together for a little while. She said that when she was studying, she was given one full week to go into the Museum and the Sistine Chapel for free every day, and that she spent an entire day in the Sistine Chapel soaking up all the tiny details. She wasn’t very old at all, but I would imagine the hoards of tourists were a bit less back then, but I enjoyed her enthusiasm.
The queue wasn’t long at all, actually, so any skip the queue passes (kind of including ours) were a bit useless. Anyway, we got inside, went through security, got our headsets and started off. Unfortunately I found her a little hard to hear through the headphones and would try to listen more without them where possible. She started off by taking us upstairs and straight to the original staircase. This used to be the main entrance but now is more of a beautiful piece of art in itself.
Near the staircase was a giant touchscreen board, and she scanned her guides badge and it came alive. This was very different to what happened on my previous tour where my guide showed us pictures in a book. With the touchscreen, she was able to show us every detail about the Sistine Chapel. Why was she doing this and why now? Because once you’re inside, you have to be silent. No talking. So she had to explain everything before we went there.
The touchscreen was quite sensational, and some of what she said was new to me and others jogged my memory. She pointed out the little chihuahua in many of the paintings, which was the signature of the artists. She pointed out the Cardinal’s face in the bottom right corner, snake attached to his penis. She pointed out the self portraits of Michelangelo and other fascinating bits of information.
We about turned and started through the museum. By now it was about 10.30 and overrun with tourists. Simply overrun. I asked Dan at one point if he thought it would be best to queue up for longer outside, and not have as many people let in, or be thankful you’re in, even though you are flooded with people? I didn’t know the answer to this. The guide took the exact same path as I had previously taken, she stopped at some of the same monuments and paintings and statues but also at some different ones. The benefit of the headphones is that you can wander away (as much as possible in that crowd) to take photos, without losing what she is saying.
My favourite was still the 3D painted ceiling, and the map walls. At the end of this corridor, she left us to our own devices in the Sistine Chapel. I had a much greater appreciation for it this time, what with the deeper explanations and just seeing it all again. I quite happily stood and looked at all the different panels, craning my neck upwards to view the roof. I love that he started at one end, got down to the ground, realised the people were all too small, and you can visibly see the characters getting bigger as they go along the ceiling.
We stayed here for about 10 minutes, punctuated by the men on microphones demanding “SILENCIO. SILENCE. NO PHOTO. NO VIDEO.” I wondered what the job description for this role looks like? Must be able to say SILENCE 400 million times a day. At midday, a priest took to the stage and led a prayer, which was unexpected for me and a nice touch. The room actually went pretty silent for a change…
We went to the back and muttered a few things to each other. We had considered going back out and through the museum again, but I was worried we would take the wrong exit and leave entirely, not making it into the Basilica. Dan noticed the door on the right was closed and said “Exit to Basilica” and it occurred to me that that was the door I had left from last time. It was shut, and the people were building up in front of it because the Basilica was not yet open. So we decided to do another lap of the Chapel.
After a short while, Dan noticed the door had opened (there was no way for me to tell this, I’m not tall enough!) and so we started the slow shuffle out of the Sistine Chapel. It took us quite a while to get out, but we took it slowly without shoving and we got there in the end! We followed the crowd outside and shuffled our way to the door of St Peter’s Basilica. There was quite a crowd waiting to get in - they must have only just opened it up, but we didn’t have to wait and were inside very quickly. Outside, all of the chairs were still set up for the audience with the Pope.
Once inside, I marvelled at how many people there were! Definitely on this trip to Rome, there were so many more people in the city than when I was there 3 years ago at roughly the same time. The Basilica was pretty full. But as I found last time, it was beautiful in here. I love looking up at the ceiling and the archways, and seeing different golden images and Latin words peeking through the gaps. Dan and I did a full lap in all the areas we were able to (except for a little chapel). We were able to get quite close to the front altar, and on the other side we ducked into a small offshoot, discovering the Basilica shop. It was here that Dan decided to see if there was anything to get his Grandma as a present.
On the way into the shop, we had seen some girls give little glass bottles to a man in a suit, who ran away with them. Once in the shop we realised what had happened - the girls had bought little glass vials, given it to the gentleman who had them filled up with Holy Water from the Vatican. This would make an excellent present! We found the little glass vials in the shop, and saw a sign above: “To be filled with Holy Water between the hours of 10am - 1pm, 4pm - 6pm”. It was 1.01pm. We raced back out to the gentleman in the suit and asked if it was still possible to have them filled. He said he would try.
He accompanied Dan to the counter, and collected another couple of people on the way. He grabbed the vials, and took them away while Dan and the other people paid. At 1.06pm he returned, shaking his head, saying “I tried.” This was a tad disappointing, but we had a thought - there wasn’t all that much we wanted to do in Rome, to be honest, and the weather wasn’t great for outdoor activities, so why don’t we try to get back in via the free queue for the 4pm Holy Water filling session?
With this in mind, we finished off the Basilica and popped out into the day. It was quite warm, and very cloudy and muggy. It was definitely lunch time by now, and I hadn’t researched this time. I didn’t know what I really felt like, and Dan and I were just wandering a bit aimlessly looking for a place. I wanted to sit somewhere outside, however we passed a little place called La Salumeria. It didn’t have outdoor seating but the menu consisted of a massive assortment of freshly made panini’s, all €5 or €6.
It was a relief to sit down, and we perched ourselves at a high table. It was a bit self service which was fine and the man behind the counter gave us a couple of menus. Oh my Lordy, there were so many different flavours to choose from! Each with different meat varieties, and each were really interesting flavour combinations. There were probably about 30 different panini’s. In the end, I settled with a prosciutto, sheeps cheese, honey, mustard and pear, while Dan went with a gourmet ham, zucchini, brie, mushrooms and truffle. We also got a bottle of wine, of course.
After a short while, the panini’s were ready and we collected them from the counter. They were life changing. So delicious! We sat here and people watched, eating our fresh crusty sandwiches. We still had a lot of wine left, and while I was definitely full, I put out the suggestion to Dan, “Do you want to get another one to share?”. He pointed to a man at another table. “He got a second one!” And so that was that. I returned to the counter and asked for the menu again. This time we got the fancy ham with sheeps cheese, lemon caparccio and vodka because it was so strange sounding! It was. Delicious. Normally on a sandwich like this you would get one slice of meat - this had 7. I could barely get my teeth through it!
Definitely sated by now, and time had passed quickly. It was almost 3pm! I had read that the best time to get in was about 3pm as the queue moves quicker. So back to the Vatican we went! We joined the queue riiiiiiiiiiight round the other side at 3.20pm. Our wine buzz made it go much faster! The line actually moved very quickly. At peak times of day, you can be in the queue for 2+ hours, sometimes up to 4 in the blistering heat. By the time we snaked through the queue, and through security (choosing a slow line there of course, by accident), it had taken us 42 minutes in total. Not bad!
By now it was a few minutes after 4pm, so we made a beeline for the Holy Water area. The gentleman in the suit was there, and he took our one little vial as well as many other people’s - most people were buying at least 2 if not 5 or 6. He went away, and a few minutes later returned with all of the bottles full. Dan and I had joked that they probably just go around to the tap and fill them up, but hopefully that wasn’t the case!
When we left the shop area, the barricades at the front of the Basilica had been moved, not allowing people close to the altar. I asked a guard why, and he said it was almost mass time. Of course - it was a Wednesday, and to the left of the altar was a little area where people could pray. Earlier that day we could wander all through all of this but now it was closed off. We were glad we got in earlier that day! It would have been disappointing getting in now for the first time - or maybe you wouldn’t know any better.
We ended up being herded into a bit of a corner and down some stairs into the crypt. It was quite interesting down here - many previous Popes had been lain to rest down here with little explanations of their life and their charitable works. I asked Dan, “I wonder where this pops us out?” We were about to find out. Outside the Basilica! As we weren’t quite ready to leave yet, we re-entered the Basilica - for the third time today, for one last little peek around. As we were walking through, we noticed a beautiful shaft of light coming down from the ceiling through the dome, and Dan and I stopped to take photos of it from every conceivable angle. It shows how similar we have grown - we each took a photo, we both looked at our cameras, and at the same time said, "Oh it's gone!". That made us giggle which was probably inappropriate...!
Now we decided it was definitely time to go. We had a quick toilet stop - the men’s queue was non-existent but of course the ladies took an age. I had originally suggested that we walk around the circumference of the Vatican - it’s only 3.2km around! However we were totally stuffed, and decided to call it a day. On the way to the train station, we picked up a gelato which helped the energy levels, and returned to our hotel room.
At the station, we ducked into the supermarket to get some bits for dinner - all we felt like was some cold fruit salad! It had been a long, long day of walking, and we - naturally - had an early start the next day, so we called it a night.
Til next time,
xx
